My Song

by Harry Belafonte

  I played a return engagement at the Cocoanut Grove that August when Carmen Jones finished filming, and once again, the place was packed. I had it all now: top club money and billing; the movie due out in October; and a second child on the way. What more could a man want? The right mate, perhaps.

  Shari’s arrival on September 22, 1954, was indeed a joyous occasion. Within days, though, Marguerite chanced upon my stash of letters from Julie, and read them through. They only confirmed what she’d suspected, but with their discovery, a line was drawn; now it was only a matter of when, not if, we’d divorce.

  8

  Carmen Jones was just what Otto Preminger had hoped it would be: a true sensation. Dorothy Dandridge was on the cover of Life magazine the week it opened, dressed as Carmen, and long lines formed at movie theaters in New York and Los Angeles. Dorothy impressed the critics, certainly more than I did. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times admired her “slinky, hip-swinging” sex appeal; he found me “an oddly static symbol of masculine lust, lost in a vortex of confusion.” Overall, he called Carmen Jones “a crazy mixed-up film,” and that I had to agree with, if only because of the lip-synching, which made it painful to watch. But it had a lot of passion, it stirred talk and excitement, and Preminger won his gamble. Carmen Jones became the first black film to make serious money, not just in the United States but in Europe, where it played nearly a year in London and Berlin. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the well-known professor and writer, remembers it as electrifying for him and his whole community of young black friends, both for its story and for its cultural significance. It also won a Golden Globe award for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy), and for Dorothy, an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. That made her the first African-American so honored. Grace Kelly would win that year for The Country Girl, but Dorothy seemed to be, for that moment at least, where she’d always wanted to be: in the pantheon of Hollywood’s leading ladies. I, on the other hand, found myself traveling across America on a Greyhound bus.

  I’d signed on to co-star in a traveling musical revue called 3 for Tonight, in part because it promised to be a real greasepaint-and-glory, old-style theater tour. But it also intrigued me that the tour would wind its way through the heart of Dixie. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling, making integration the law of the land in public schools and colleges. With southern governors vowing to resist it, the stage was set for the civil rights movement. I wanted to put my songs before southern white audiences so set on segregation. I wanted them to have a close look at me as I used my art to challenge their social theories. Perhaps yet another reason for going on the road was getting away from home and Marguerite’s mother.

  3 for Tonight had come to me by chance, as so much else had and would. Early that year, while I was in Almanac, an interesting character named Paul Gregory had wandered in at intermission to catch the second act. Gregory was a manager and producer with one client: British actor Charles Laughton. The two had teamed up to stage a number of Broadway shows. Their latest, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, directed by Laughton and starring Henry Fonda, was in rehearsals up the street at the Plymouth Theatre, and Gregory peeked into Almanac to calm his pre-opening-night nerves. He liked what he heard, and soon brought Laughton to hear me as well. Laughton liked what he saw. The plan they concocted, after coming back to hear me several times in Almanac, was to put me in their next theatrical venture—their inspired way of combating the dreaded new threat of television.

  All over the country now, Americans were gathering nightly in front of the boob tube, which drove Hollywood crazy. The entire Hollywood star system was under siege. The studios did everything they could to stave off this box-office cancer. The question was how to get folks back into theaters, especially outside New York. Gregory and Laughton had come up with the notion of all-star dramatic readings and speaking tours. For their first experiment, they’d persuaded Charles Boyer, Agnes Moorehead, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke to team up with Laughton in black tie for a reading of Don Juan in Hell, act three, scene two, of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. A lone figure would walk out on the bare stage as the curtain rose and say, “Good evening, my name is Charles Boyer.” Then, in sequence, each actor introduced himself in the same way—the last being Laughton, who said, “Shall we begin?” The audience would gasp with delight; Boyer and the others were big stars, especially in the hinterlands. The troupe barnstormed around the country and made a bundle. Not the least of its appeals was that the show cost almost nothing to produce: no sets, no music, just four music stands for the four great stars. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial had followed the same route to Broadway, and now the canny impresarios wanted to try their first bare-stage musical. Already, they had Marge and Gower Champion, the dazzlingly handsome husband-and-wife dance pair often compared to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. They wanted me to complete their 3 for Tonight trio.

  Like most revues, 3 for Tonight had a very loose story, a kind of apple-pie history of America with an Our Town sort of narrator, lots of unrelated songs, and about thirty wooden stools as our only props. But Gregory and Laughton had tapped some top production talent to put it all together. Robert Wells, who’d written “The Christmas Song” with Mel Tormé (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire …”), wrote lyrics for many of the songs; Walter Schumann and Nathan Scott, later famous for the Dragnet theme, did much of the music; a young Blake Edwards, of future Pink Panther fame, assisted; and Laughton himself directed until we hit the road, when Gower Champion took over. Of the songs I sang, my favorite was “Scarlet Ribbons.” Though not a hit when I first recorded it, the song would go on to be one of my most loved, and it helped me wend my way into the hearts of white America.

  We opened on October 28, 1954, in the leafy college town of Claremont, just east of L.A., the very same night Carmen Jones opened on movie screens on both coasts. The audience gave us a standing ovation. No one seemed to care that a white couple and a black man were singing and dancing together, and that in the final number, the white woman and black man held hands. But Gregory had lined us up for fifty-seven cities in all, and the route would take us east through Texas and most of the Deep South.

  From their previous tours, Gregory and Laughton had learned to book university auditoriums: They were easier to get for one- or two-night stands than commercial theaters, and were often the only games in town. One early stop was at the University of Utah, where an eager theater student named George C. Scott insisted on joining us after the show. That boy could drink! None of us could keep up. Nor did we try very hard.

  The Jim Crow treatment started right at the Texas state line. White-only bathrooms at the gas stations, white-only restaurants, nice hotels for the rest of the troupe, colored-only motels for Millard Thomas and me. Gregory had promised we wouldn’t play segregated towns, and that the cast would lodge together at every stop. But Gregory just lied, knowing that once I was on the road under contract, I couldn’t back out. Neither he nor Laughton was with us for the ride. We were on our own, the Champions and me, along with Millard and the other musicians and singers. All of us were in the Greyhound, with a truck behind us carrying the instruments and all those stools. When we pulled into our next destination and the hotel said whites only, what were we supposed to do? The answer was to avoid hotels altogether if we could. Millard and I took to calling ahead to Negro community leaders to help us with our accommodations. Some offered their homes, and their hospitality was gratefully accepted.

  The worst racial incidents came after Christmas. A confusing Christmas, to say the least, brightened by tiny Shari and five-year-old Adrienne, but with their parents so awkward in each other’s presence that I actually felt relieved to be heading back down to the segregated South. Until, that is, our merry troupe reached Spartanburg, South Carolina.

  The Ku Klux Klan was a force throughout the South, but Spartanburg was one of its hotbeds. When 3 for Tonight posters went up around town, showing its three stars togethe
r, the angry mutterings began. By the day of our performance, word had gotten around that the mixed-race cast didn’t just appear onstage together, but danced a finale—and took their bows—holding hands. We went on anyway. Halfway through the show, the mayor came backstage to tell us the Klan was on its way over, whether to burn down the theater or shoot it up, he couldn’t say. With local police keeping watch out front, we finished our numbers. Then, instead of filing out a stage door with the backup singers and musicians, Millard and I slipped out a back door, into a waiting police cruiser, and sped to a small airstrip, where a private plane, arranged for by a local promoter, was waiting to whisk us off to the campus of the University of North Carolina. The Klan never did materialize, but the fear we felt onstage, imagining they’d show up, was very real.

  Who knew, in those Jim Crow situations, how much danger we were really in? All I know is that the hatred radiated like southern summer heat. Toward the end of our tour, our bus stopped at a Greyhound station outside of Richmond, Virginia, and I went off groggily to relieve myself, not noticing the WHITE ONLY sign on the bathroom door. As I unzipped my fly in front of a urinal, I heard a low, hate-filled voice behind me. “You let go one drop, you’re a dead nigger.” I turned to see a Virginia state trooper, standing there with his hand on his holstered gun. I can’t remember another time when I had the rush of emotions I experienced then. Fortunately, my urine had more sense than I did; it retreated. And I followed it. Zipped up my fly and walked out. The rage I felt, and the embarrassment, and indignity, linger in my memory as clearly as if it were yesterday.

  That night, I walked onstage in Richmond as if nothing had happened. I grinned out at that crowd in the darkness, did my best to entertain, and took my customary hand-holding bows with Marge and Gower. Afterward, we went to a reception at the home of a black newspaper editor, in whose guest bedroom I’d be staying that night.

  “Congratulations,” the editor told me. “You sure made history in Richmond tonight.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You danced with a white woman, and held her hand in a segregated house—and nothing happened.”

  3 for Tonight was due to open on Broadway in April 1955, which gave me time to tuck in a club date that meant a lot to me—at New York’s Copacabana. With manager Jules Podell acting as the front man for Frank Costello, one of the kings of the underworld, this most prestigious joint in New York, which for years had had a vicious racist policy, was now seeking to hire me. On the club circuit at the time, the Copa was unique—the very tip of the top. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin played the Copa; Lena Horne and Billy Eckstine and Nat King Cole played the Copa; even Edith Piaf played the Copa. I knew that my debut at the Copa would be a validation; the Copa carried a lot of juice. It would be another sign, if one were needed, that I had arrived. But I also had a private, very personal reason to take that stage. I imagined seeing that doorman’s face again. And wondered if he would even remember the black sailor he’d barred from the club in 1944. The sailor who was now the top banana inside. There’s a certain mental and emotional glue associated with incidents of discrimination: You remember the faces, years after they’ve forgotten yours. That doorman was long gone, it turned out.

  I was now signed to one of the most powerful theatrical agencies in the world—MCA. Its CEO was a man named Lew Wasserman, who, as powerful as he was then, would go on to heights not attained by anyone else in his day. For many years he was the most powerful man in the entertainment business. Lew had taken a personal liking to me, and, although many seedy and hard-edged stories were told about Lew, I made a lot of room for him. I liked him in my space. He would, in later years as the head of Universal Pictures and other institutions, be most generous each time I called on him for significant financial support for hard-to-fund causes. We even shared our experiences as members of the board of the Peace Corps appointed by President John Kennedy. It was Lew who personally guided the negotiations of my Copacabana adventure.

  We carved out our space on East Sixtieth Street in Manhattan, with Millard Thomas beside me on guitar. Tony Scott pulled together an orchestra of great players, many of whom were from my Royal Roost and Birdland Rolodex. With Tony conducting, the music grooved every set, but I always had to be ready for some prank or surprise. Sometimes in the middle of his clarinet solo, Tony would stick the instrument up his nose and try to blow it! Or put a part of it in his ear and treat it like a telephone. He’d come out onstage with the top half of his tuxedo on, but not the pants. He stayed pretty well behaved at the Copa, compared to other joints we played, but I never knew what each night would bring. The audience loved him. I could count on the tables being filled. Even so, the Copa was always a challenge. Morey Amsterdam, the comedian, was the other headliner, and as zany and brilliant as he was, at many a show he’d struggle to be heard. I had better luck: I stunned them into silence with “Jerry,” and by the time Tony and the band got to songs like “Angelina,” “Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” or our Basie-style version of “On Top of Old Smokey,” then “Hava Nageela,” with the audience sing-along and a long wrap-up of “Matilda,” folk singing went to another zone and I was its happy landlord.

  Before the end of my run at the Copa, MCA informed me that Podell was looking for a new deal. The club wanted a long-term commitment. “What are the numbers?” I asked. Dave Baumgarden, the MCA agent of record at the time, replied, “How high the moon?” I smiled. I liked the melody, but I finally told Podell the answer was no. He was shocked. He said somewhat threateningly, “Greed could be troublesome.” I pointed out that it wasn’t about money. The money would never be big enough. It was about a night during the war in 1944 when a Negro man in uniform with his lady were robbed of their dignity. That moment could never be made right.

  On the closing night of our performance, Podell, in a drunken fury, went to the back of the club and opened the doors to the kitchen and service area. He ran a mop handle along the dish rack, smashing every plate and cup and all the glasses in his reach and overturning pots and pans and skillets. Everything he could find. In the turmoil, customers headed for the door as security personnel got him under control. All because I had said no. It was a sad moment. The confrontation never really satisfied anything; there was no sense of justice or reward. In later years, I found myself, from time to time, thinking back on what had transpired and wondering what I should have done differently. Certainly, had Martin Luther King been in my life then, it might have been another scenario.

  3 for Tonight opened April 16, 1955, at the Plymouth Theatre, to sold-out crowds and glowing reviews. In fact, they were almost too glowing. “Producer Paul Gregory doesn’t need three for tonight so long as he’s got Harry Belafonte for tonight,” declared Walter Kerr in the New York Herald Tribune. That put a little chill in my relations with the Champions, no question about it. “Why is Harry Belafonte so magnificent in 3 for Tonight?” Brooks Atkinson asked in The New York Times. “Because he represents the fanaticism of the dedicated artist. Eliminating himself, he concentrates on the songs with fiery intensity…. Mr. Belafonte never makes a mistake in taste or showmanship, for he is all artist and a rousing performer.” Kerr had gone even further in the Herald Tribune. He said that opening night was one of those rare occasions when a major entertainer “unforgettably announces his existence.”

  As far as I could tell, the only person not delighted in that opening-night audience was my mother. I’d coaxed her into coming—no easy job, given her muttering that she wasn’t the sort of woman who went to Broadway plays, and didn’t want to accept the free tickets I was offering for her and my stepfather, Bill Wright, and their two children. Finally she’d come—alone, using just one ticket so as not to be any more in my debt than necessary. After the last thunderous ovation, she’d let herself be led backstage, and when I’d changed into street clothes, she consented to walk with me out the stage door, past the autograph-seekers, up the block to a corner coffee shop. “The people really love you,” she observed.

/>   It was a wonderful show, I replied.

  “But just think if you’d taken to your music studies with Mrs. Shepherd,” she said sternly in her still-soft Jamaican accent. “You’d have sounded as good as Mario Lanza.”

  This was a time of rising stardom for me—a first album out and more to come, my first big club dates on either coast, a leading role in a Hollywood hit, a starring role in one Broadway revue that had led to another. Yet deep down, I felt confused and, all too often, unhappy. My dying marriage accounted for much of this, and Julie, my new hope for happiness, was still in Italy with dance obligations. But my despair—and, really, it was that—had deeper, tangled roots. As if I needed reminding in my mother’s remarks, my childhood had left me with emotional needs that perhaps no one could fill. My racial identity confused me still; I was black, yes, but West Indian, playing to white audiences—a cultural hybrid, in between. Success was confusing, too. Stardom had come so quickly; was it me those audiences were applauding, or some stage double named Harry Belafonte? And if it was the latter, how long could I keep up the act? As if all these weren’t worries enough, that home visit from the FBI haunted me. Clearly, my government was tracking me—possibly my every move—because my liberal political views struck J. Edgar Hoover as subversive. This was enough to make anyone feel not just depressed, but paranoid.